Virtual oceans of ink (and later, virtual ink) have been spilled writing about the watches worn on the first successful expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1953. There have always been unanswered questions surrounding the epic event (who was first to the top, Sir Edmund Hillary or his Sherpa teammate Tenzing Norgay?) and the questions extend to the watches. Hillary later did advertisements for both Rolex and the British watch company Smiths, saying he had “carried” a Smiths watch “all the way to the top.” ‘Carried’ seems like an odd choice of wording for a wrist watch as opposed to a pocket watch. It has led collectors to wonder if perhaps Hillary wore his Rolex on his wrist and carried a Smiths in his pocket, possibly as a backup. Little known until recently, both Norgay and Hillary sometimes wore two watches, one on each wrist. We know this because photos survive of the men doing just that on the expedition and immediately afterwards. Recently, the very Rolex watch used by Hillary on the expedition surfaced in an unusual place—the Beyer Watch and Clock Museum in Zürich, Switzerland. According to the Beyer museum, it was a gift to Mr. Beyer for his museum from Rolex.
An Interesting Watch, a Fascinating History
How did the watch come to be at Beyer’s by way of Rolex and not from Hillary or his family? The answer is an interesting slice of Rolex history. It was common in those days for Rolex to supply newly-developed watches to explorers, scientists, and adventurers for test purposes. Rolex knew there was no laboratory like the real world for finding out what worked and what didn’t. The agreement between Rolex and the testers was usually for the tester to use and abuse the watch, sometimes sending back reports or making notes of its performance. They were then to return it to Rolex for test and evaluation at the end of a designated period. In later years the company would often then send the watch to the tester as a gift, thanking them for their input. In the case of Hillary’s Everest Rolex, the company appears to have kept the watch and never sent it back to Hillary. This is perhaps a testament to its extraordinary place in history and the company’s desire to keep such a special piece for themselves.
The Reference 6350 is the earliest reference to have been called the Explorer, although that word appears nowhere on the dial of Hillary’s watch. It features a creamy white dial simply marked in black letters ‘Rolex Oyster Perpetual Officially Certified Chronometer’ with a splash of red in the color of the word ‘Officially’.The famous arabic 3, 6, 9 dial of later Rolex Explorer watches isn’t present. The Hillary Pre-Explorer watch has dagger hands, triangular indexes inlayed with radioactive radium, and a small applied coronet at 12 o’clock. The radium has burned the dial slightly over the years, and one hand must’ve been at 5 o’clock for quite some time. A faint, straight line radium burn is present there. A scrap of the packaging used by Hillary to mail the watch from his native New Zealand back to Rolex is displayed with the watch. It is certainly one of the most historically significant watches in the world and incredibly cool, too. We just wish it could talk, as questions remain about its actual use on the expedition.
Did It Make it To The Top?
Some collectors insist that Hillary left his Rolex in base camp and wore, or “carried” the Smiths watch to the top. Did his Rolex, like Norgay’s, actually make it to the top of Everest? At this point, it appears unlikely a definitive answer will ever be known. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t really matter. Rolex co-sponsored the expedition, supplied watches for it, and at least one of them made it to the top of the world the first time Everest was successfully summited by man. The Reference 6350 was swiftly named the Explorer and a new and significant line of watches was born. The Smiths Watch company has long since gone out of business, but the Rolex Explorer line is still going strong.
Whether Hillary’s Rolex made it to the summit that storied day or not, it helped define the “tool watch” concept and cemented Rolex’s position as the king of the rugged sports watch market—a position the company still holds in the luxury watch industry today.